On Wed, 10 Dec 2003 22:36:54 +0000, "Paul J. Adam"
wrote:

In message , Chad Irby
writes
In article ,
"Paul J. Adam" wrote:
...and you're quoting the same sort of logic they used back then.
You're comparing planes and equipment, but not *missions*.

Okay, so let's get to the bottom line: how many F-4 sorties were *not*
intended to kill the enemy and break his stuff or directly support that
aim?

(Or to photograph it before and after being broken, or to keep fighters
off the breakers, or to stop his SAMs and AAA interfering, or...)

Or to strafe or nape his troops in contact. When all you have is a
Phantom, every problem has a Phantom solution.

Part of the problem with F-4 sorties is that F-4s were RFBA-4s. In
"One Day In A Long War" this was really obvious. The USN launched
F-4s to protect the A-7s, while the USAF launched fighter F-4s to
protect the bomber F-4s, and the USAF RF-4s and USN RA-5As took happy
snaps.

Because of this, you can't lump all F-4 sorties together. Ethel and
Price don't, for example. They differentiate by role, which is how it
has to be done. Bomber and attack and recce F-4s aren't fighter F-4s,
any more than A-7s are. The F/A-18, that could fight its way to the
target, wasn't invented yet.

If your chosen tactic hauls sixty aircraft in rigid formation along a
predictable course and is vulnerable to a slashing attack by one or two
MiGs on a vulnerable element, then that's bad... unless it gets two
dozen strikers on-target and stops you losing half-a-dozen aircraft to
SAMs.

Shades of Bomber Command? Remember that the Vietnam War was only a
little more than twenty years after WW II and there were pilots flying
in SEA who had flown in WW II. When you talk about strategy and
tactics, you have to keep that in mind.

Trouble is, all the guns you like won't stop #4 of one of the escort
sections getting an unseen Atoll up the tailpipe and won't help you
chase that MiG-21 down and kill him.

Guns on fighters didn't stop the Luftwaffe from picking off B-17s,
either. Or the escorts. So what's new?

For example, the Navy planes flew sorties against coastal areas, which
meant that they were flying over relatively undefended airspace on the
run in, as compared to the large number of SAMs that the Air Force
fighters and bombers went over.

So produce some numbers. Relative SAM losses per sortie, for instance?
I'm open to data, I just get wary about assertion and anecdote.

The data is there, but it's so often lumped into aggregate numbers
that it's hard to tease the real answers out. You have to ask how
many AAM kills per aircraft that sortied with AAMs or how many SAM
kills per SEAD aircraft or how many enemy infantry deaths per aircraft
with guns and nape and willy pete or how much materiel destroyed per
bomb truck. If you don't, you get very deceptive numbers.

One other note: of the 21 MiG kills by the F-4E during Vietnam, five
were gun kills... pretty good for something so useless.

This aircraft has Sparrow and Sidewinder, and by the time the F-4E is
flying they're demonstrating performance (the Sidewinder was up to 50%
Pk in its AIM-9G form). Yet it's making a quarter of its kills with
guns? Where did that battery of AAMs go in those engagements?

They were back at base. Bomber and attack and SEAD F-4Es only have
guns to defend themselves. They left the AAM at home to carry bombs.
Fewer than half the USAF F-4 were fighters with AAM. Since the
non-fighter F-4s would have been carrying their ordnance during the
inbound half of the flight and only been able to get into the fur ball
outgoing, I'd say guns were under-represented in kills. This probably
proves that the escort F-4s had more chances at MiGs than the
home-going non-fighters.

Betcha didn't think of that, did you? I didn't think of it until
about the third time I read One Day and actually studied the tables.
It's like adding in B-17 guns kills to the escort kills to pronounce
on the effectiveness of the escort fighters guns, I suppose.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer